MIAMI — Hurricane Isaias strengthened into a major Category 3 hurricane early Friday as it closed in on the northern Gulf Coast, where it is expected to make landfall between Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle on Friday night or early Saturday, the National Hurricane Center said.
Data from an Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft showed maximum sustained winds had climbed to 120 mph, with a minimum central pressure of 959 millibars, the center said in a 7:20 a.m. CDT update. Isaias was about 240 miles south of Pensacola, Florida, and 170 miles south-southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, moving north-northeast at 15 mph. Hurricane-force winds extended up to 30 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds up to 185 miles.
A hurricane warning remains in effect from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, to the Bay/Gulf County line in Florida, and a storm surge warning runs from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Suwannee River. The center warned of 6 to 9 feet of surge from the Alabama-Florida border to Grayton Beach, Florida, and 4 to 8 inches of rain across southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and Big Bend and southwest Georgia, with local totals up to 15 inches. Forecasters expect increasing wind shear to cause some weakening before landfall, with a high-end Category 2 storm their best forecast, but their forecast discussion cautioned that “it would only take about a 6h delay in the onset of the shear to bring a stronger hurricane than expected onshore.”
Governors of Florida, Georgia and Alabama have declared states of emergency, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s declaration covers 25 counties, BBC News reported. About 63 percent of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico — nearly 1.3 million barrels a day — had been temporarily shut in as platforms were evacuated, DW reported. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said its incident management teams were deploying to Alabama and Florida and that it was prepositioning supplies at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, The Guardian reported, as experts warned the storm could be the agency’s biggest test since the Trump administration’s staffing cuts.
Sources: National Hurricane Center, BBC Weather, DW, The Guardian
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